“The tools coming down the pipe allow me to manage my own Net Present Value to BA for flying arrangements. I’ll still use Dopplr ror meeting friends in strange places, but I will manage the relationship with BA, using C2B enabling systems provide via VRM

…was really good fun. We all gathered at Google reception in Victoria, signed away our nth-borns NDA, got badged and taken up to the meeting room by ever-vigilant googlers in a set up reminiscent of under-cover operations. Many thanks to Ben for letting a herd of VRMers into the non-evil Google lair and providing us with water to moisten our throats dry from all the talking. After a whirlwind session of ideas and challenging questions, we ‘retired’ to the nearby pub where the conversations continued. Ideas were shared, connections made and good foundations laid for the next meeting.

There was a very eclectic bunch of people and the topics discussed ranged from marketing and advertising to technical implementation of data sharing in VRM context and the basic aspects of VRM infrastructure. It was great to have Doc present and may he be in London many a time in the coming months. The need for a messianic bearded individual was expressed and it was felt that Doc fits the bill perfectly, despite his protests.

One of the outcomes of the meeting was connecting with a couple of geeks/coders willing to sit down and help to translate the vision of VRM personal data space into technical specs and hopefully a prototype to demonstrate what we have been trying to describe since the VRM brainstorming session at IIW in Mountain View last December.

Together with Alec we were able to do that with VRM feeds based data sharing, but now we need to move onto the lightweight tools for personal data capture, analysis and management (working name u-spot and after discussions last night likely to change to MINE. )

The next VRM Hub meeting is scheduled for 27th March, sign up here. We are on a look out for venue, so far we met in a wine bar and in an office. Ideally, we need something in between – a space we can both hang out and drink wine/beer/etc as well as sit down, open a laptop and take discussions further – I call it 3Ws – wi-fi, wine, whiteboard. There are already some ideas and suggestions, which are most welcome. And as the meetings grow in scope, I am sure there will be more.

Note: A reminder for those who blog or post photos about the event to use two tags VRM and VRMUK. Thanks.

“In recent months, China’s censors have tightened controls over the Internet, often blacking out sites that had no discernible political content. In the process, they have fostered a backlash, as many people who previously had little interest in politic

Imagine being able to take charge of your information and data, notes and records about past transactions, your purchase history, future plans and ideas, preferences and knowledge about areas of your life. At the moment you are the last person to be able to benefit from all this accessible only via various platforms. Your ‘digital detritus’ is not yours, it is information that others harvest and use for their own purposes. Imagine to be able to do that with the same ease as checking email, posting to a blog, adding a bookmark to del.icio.us, searching Google, commenting on an article, uploading a photo to Flickr, managing your google or ical calendar, leaving a review on Amazon, adding an application on Facebook. All this whilst protecting your privacy to the degree you find comfortable, sharing your activity or data as you wish, not as mandated by the platform providing some functionality in exchange for your data (Facebook, Amazon etc).

Imagine having your customers share with you what they like, want and think of you. At the moment, you are dependent on market research, which is like looking through a keyhole at the rich ‘user-generated’ world. Imagine being able to relate to your customers, consistently and persistently, where they contribute directly to your supply chain where it makes sense – whether it is R&D, product design, distribution and marketing. Interaction with them is modular, intuitive and user-driven freeing much of your resources spent on marketing and transaction cost.

The above is part of the vision of the Project VRM. The name stands for Vendor Relationship Management and it originates from ‘flipping’ CRM – customer relationship management. Project VRM is a community-driven effort to support the creation and building of VRM tools. The project is headquartered at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and headed by Doc Searls, a fellow with the center. The project is building a framework that sets standards and protocols for a category of tools that enable individuals and organizations to relate and transact on more equivalent terms. By minimizing the leverage and control one party has over another in a (typically commercial) relationship, individuals and organizations can instead focus on creating and sharing value. The VRM opportunity is not rooted in us vs. them emotionally-driven arguments but in creating a more efficient and balance relationship between business and their customers, markets and companies, demand and supply.

What’s in it for the individual?
The ability to manage and analyze your data will give you better knowledge about yourself, the kind of knowledge that is the holy grail of most companies’ customer data management. The awareness of your preferences, understanding of your needs will help you to articulate them easier and strengthen your position with vendors.

What’s in it for businesses?
We live in an increasingly decentralized world with more customer choice, yet vendors continue to fiercely collect and control customer data and exploit the opportunities therein. The ultimate goal of VRM is better relationships between customers and vendors, by considering and constructing tools that put the customer in control of their data and ultimately their relationships with other individuals, companies and institutions.

“Personalization is more than skinning and moving modules around. Give me a blank slate and let me add modules that might be relevant to me. Alternatively, make some good initial guesses based on what you know about me and let me modify them from the getg

“Now I feel we’ve stepped way back. The computer has all the functionality, but it’s not like you would have designed it. You’re more of a slave than a master. Computers are supposed to work the way you thought they would. You — the human being — should

commenter: “I never cease to be amazed when supporters of Open Source, Open Standards and the relative anarchy that such regimes allow turn to the government sector and want to do just the opposite: centralize everything.”

letting people manage their personal health records.. what a novel idea! interesting comment about medical records not being protected by HIPPA if transferred to an external health service run by Google or Microsoft.

Cleveland Clinic and Google officials say the pilot program is intended to free medical data from electronic-medical records so that patients can take their data wherever they go and share it with other doctors or pharmacies. Typically, control over medic

The adblocking revolution is months away (with iOS 9) – with trouble for advertisers, publishers and Google | The Overspill: when there’s more that I want to say “discussion of this post on Hacker [...] […]

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